Developer: Micronet Publisher: Micronet Release: 12/23/89 Genre: Shooter
By all respects Curse should be a game that is instantly forgettable. The Sega Genesis did not suffer from a lack of shooters even early on. And yet this one game, which never left Japan, seemed to have left an impression on my young mind. Like many I remember early magazine coverage of it, most notably in Electronic Gaming Monthly. The trippy visuals and the strange box art caught my attention but its western release was cancelled. After finally playing it I can see why; even at the system’s launch Curse would not have stood out. Average gameplay and mediocre visuals make Curse easily forgettable in the system’s massive shooter library.
Like Whip Rush Curse bears a strong similarity to R-Type. There are three primary weapons, each upgradable three times. The V-laser is your typical spread shot, the wave beam passes through walls while the crash shot explodes on impact. The crash shot in particular is devastating but only at its max level. At the lower levels it is far too slow to be effective. Luckily the game is very generous with power-ups, getting you up to speed pretty fast. Like most shooters Curse has options. These can be attached to any part of your ship like R-Type. It sounds cool but honestly you will not be making much use of that feature. It is pretty cool though.
If first impressions are anything to go by Curse will seem like a game that needs a shot of adrenaline. Its initial level is a slow, plodding mass of waves that is not anything you haven’t seen before. Even worse it is a little confusing as to which parts of the environment you can safely fly over. The lackadaisical pace does let you play around with the weapons system, not that it is complicated. From stage two onward it picks up considerably. The action alternates between relentless assaults like stage two’s asteroid field to slower sorties like the inside of the third level’s volcano. Curse is not the type of game that wows you with elaborate set pieces or high production values. It’s the type of game that does what it does adequately and little else.
Unlike the majority of shooters Curse falls on the easy side. You have a life bar that can sustain three hits which is plenty. The game is liberal with its power-ups, so even if you die more drop within seconds. Shield restoring energy pops up at least two or three times in each level, leaving room for mistakes. Curse would probably have been better off without the life bar as it saps all tension out of the game. Enemy waves are predictable and although your weapons are not particularly strong most will blow through the game quickly.
At least until the last level. Here the game plays a cruel trick on you by sending you back to the beginning of the level instead of the instant respawn system it employed up until then. It’s a brutal mechanic, especially as the final level pulls out all the stops. Traps abound everywhere and even though you will have racked up extra lives leading up to this point it can still be frustrating. Still even shooter novices will have no problem blowing through Curse’s five levels. Unfortunately once it is over there is no reason to revisit it.
Most early Genesis titles went for spectacle instead of technical prowess to wow gamers. And in most respects Curse fails at that. The backgrounds are fairly detailed and feature a generous amount of parallax scrolling. However the scrolling is jerky. That is because Curse runs at thirty frames per second instead of the industry standard sixty of the time. It is very noticeable and distracting. The color palette is garish and heavily dithered which takes away from the otherwise original creature design. And so it goes, for every one good element there is another that takes away from it.
In Closing
Curse is the definition of an average game. It is completely inoffensive; it has its flaws but nothing so major that makes it worthless. But at the same time you can skip it and won’t miss out on anything. While it would have been decent near the system’s launch ultimately we didn’t miss out on anything great.
